


rare and sweet as cherry wine

by liveyourtemptation



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, M/M, a little black cat appears, cisco sings a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 22:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9789344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liveyourtemptation/pseuds/liveyourtemptation
Summary: He had noticed what was going on pretty soon after he arrived on this earth but he was still- shocked, or startled, or fucking scared when he arrived at STAR Labs and a real tiger greeted him with a loud growl. They had stalked towards Harrison until a tiny man – in comparison to the tiger and to Harrison – had appeared behind the tiger and called them back.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [P413](https://archiveofourown.org/users/P413/gifts).



> when will i stop? P413 said "daemon au" and my brain did the thing. i don't even know what kind of writing style this is, it just came to me for this story. i even wrote in the past tense. i never do that.

It was weird and they did not have it on his earth. But Harrison dealt with it like all the strange things he encountered here in this new world; which is to say he mostly ignored it. Though it was kind of hard to ignore it whenever he did go outside and it was like taking a trip to the zoo. Some fucking weird zoo for sure but it still looked more like zoo than normal life. Really each and every human had some kind of animal trailing behind them, flying above them, clinging to them. Harrison watched it all somewhere between disturbed and fascinated.

 

He had noticed what was going on pretty soon after he arrived on this earth but he was still- shocked, or startled, or fucking scared when he arrived at STAR Labs and a real tiger greeted him with a loud growl. They had stalked towards Harrison until a tiny man – in comparison to the tiger and to Harrison – had appeared behind the tiger and called them back. Harrison's gaze had drifted between the big animal with it's glowing eyes and the young man who had his hand clutched in its fur and did not look dangerous at all, with long hair and a t-shirt that had a watermelon with sunglasses on it. His eyes were soft but his face was twisted in an expression of shock.

 

Later Harrison would find out that Cisco Ramon's daemon – that was what they were apparently called – fit better to him than it appeared at the first glance. They were both inverses of each other; the tiger of course an impressive creature, frightening, but in their behavior they resembled more a big cat or maybe even a dog, spending most of their time napping in the sun or demanding belly scratches from Cisco. And Cisco, he was easy to underestimate, but it turned out that that could be a grave mistake, especially with his evolving powers.

 

Harrison found that one could learn a lot about the character of a person from what form their daemon had taken. Dr. Snow, Caitlin, had a small falcon following her; perching on her shoulder most of the time, graceful and elegant. Harrison asked her once about it and she told him that there were clothing stores for people with bird daemons. Shoulder padding was the solution to that mystery.

 

Barry Allen, the Flash of Central City, had the most strange daemon of them all probably: a sloth. What a weird animal. Harrison had a fit of laughter when he watched them interact for the first time; the sloth reaching for Barry painstakingly slow while Allen, brimming with energy, electricity dancing through his eyes waited with a fast dissipating patience.

 

“Sometimes I wish you were hit by that lightning, too,” Harrison heard Barry say to his daemon once. He did not hear the answer.

 

That was another weird thing, or maybe just an extension of the weirdness of an already weird thing: the animals spoke. Not often in the company of other people and never directly with other people, so it took Harrison a while to notice. Their voices were strange, not human-like. It was as if the animals were still speaking their language, making the noises that Harrison knew them to make on his earth, but he suddenly understood them.

 

There was also a strict code how to behave. You did not talk to other peoples daemon's and you never ever touched them. Under no circumstances. Harrison got this hammered into his head from the team at an very early point. It did not concern him too much; he never was the person to pet strange dogs on the street and the daemons still unsettled him anyhow. But that was why he froze in shock when one day he was working in the workshop and the tiger trotted over to him and laid their head on Harrison's leg.

 

He did not dare to move. Maybe it was not so bad when the daemon was just touching his jeans. He did not want to upset anyone, okay maybe he kind of wanted to upset Ramon, but not like this, not so deeply and he especially did not want to upset the tiger. The tiger blinked at him with their golden eyes. Harrison could see just a sliver of white fangs.

 

“They want you to pet them,” Ramon said from across the room. He only threw a short look over to his daemon and Harrison could not determine what emotions flashed over his face.

 

He wracked his brain, thinking of instances where Caitlin or Barry touched the tiger, or anyone at all touched a daemon that was not theirs. He should have payed more attention. “I thought I was not allowed to,” He settled on saying.

 

“Yeah, generally,” Ramon said, this time without looking up from his project. “But if they come up to you it's alright. Not many will do that though. Everyone says they have never seen a daemon as touchy as mine.”

 

Harrison made a uninterpretable sound and slowly relaxed. He lowered one hand on the head of the tiger. Soft, was his first thought. The tiger closed their eyes and a low rumble came from deep within them. Harrison carefully petted the tiger, not sure what or why he was doing it.

 

There was a shrieking sound and then the falcon flew so deep over Harrison's head he could feel a gush of wind. They made a habit of doing that and Harrison was still trying to puzzle out what that said about Snow's feelings for him. Because the one thing he had learned is that the daemons mostly shared the emotions of their human partner and were more open about them. Or they just had another way of showing them, which meant more data for Harrison to analyze. He was glad he did not have a daemon or his secrets would probably not stay secrets for too long.

 

Caitlin followed her falcon into the workshop and clapped excitedly as she saw the tiger laying his head in Harrison's lap. “Aw, now you're really part of the team.” She slung her arms around Cisco from behind, leaning her weight on him. “Even Cisco likes you, now.”

 

“How am I supposed to keep any kind of mystery when my daemon has no chill?” Ramon complained.

 

Harrison looked down on the the tiger who had opened their eyes again. It looked as if they were smiling. “You like me?” Harrison asked and tried not to sound dumbfounded.

 

“I know,” Ramon said and grinned over to him. “I must be out of my mind.”

 

Over time this universe must had accepted Harrison as one of its own. Harrison had no other explanation for what happened to him.

 

He found the box in a corner a few streets away from STAR Labs. He had been going crazy from staying inside the whole time and used the darkness of the night to take a quick walk outside. First he heard the sounds. A minute later he located the box. On his earth this was something you read about in books or saw in movies but nothing that really happened. He would have to ask someone on the team if this was common on this earth. It was a simple cardbox and there were shuffling noises coming from inside it. He crouched down to peek inside. He saw something moving and he flipped the box open. Two gray eyes stared at him. The cat was hardly visible, black as the night. By what Harrison could make out it was still small, still young and it had been left out here.

 

Harrison picked it up and lifted it to his face, in the light. The cat meowed weakly and stretched its paw out. It landed on Harrison's nose. The cat stopped moving and they stayed like this for a moment: one paw still on Harrison's nose. Harrison put the cat back in the box and left.

 

He made it to the next street corner before he turned back around.

 

Back in STAR Labs he put the cat on one side of his cot and sat down on the other. The cat looked around, smelled the blankets under it, then slowly started walking towards Harrison. He extended one hand to it. The cat smelled it carefully before licking it shortly. Then it seemed to decide that was enough, instead falling down the cot to investigate the rest the room.

 

Harrison spent the rest of the night watching the little black kitten stumble through his room.

 

He woke up the next morning, still fully clothed, his glasses lost somewhere under his cot. He looked around until he saw the cat. It was curled together on the other cot, apparently asleep. He had put that cot there for Jesse, more of a gesture really, a reminder to himself why he was here.

 

The cat integrated itself flawlessly into the team. They were all used to animals being around anyway and they were all of the opinion that Harrison did the right thing to not leave it behind on the street. Ramon cooed endlessly over it and spent the first day chasing it through the workshop and letting it ride around on his tiger. He got barely as much impulse control as a five year old.

 

Somewhere around that time Harrison started sleeping with Ramon.

 

It all started one particular evening when they all went to a bar together, even Harrison. At the end of the evening when Barry had already left, Harrison sat alone at the bar while Ramon and Snow chatted at their table. People looked at Harrison strangely. At first he had thought they had recognized him as the other Harrison Wells but then he had been told it was because he had no daemon. That was possible, but it was rare and to loose your daemon was a fate so horrible you did not wish it on your worst enemy. The other Harrison Wells, or rather Eobard Thawne did not have a daemon. Publicly the story was it had died in the car crash with his wife. But after the big revelation of his true origins the team speculated that he had left it back where he came from or that in the future there was no such thing as daemons.

 

But back to the bar and the half-full glass of whiskey Harrison was nursing. After a while Ramon had come over to him, flushed red from the alcohol and maybe something more, the tiger settling to their feet, kicking their tail against Harrison's legs. Ramon had started an argument back up that had already consumed their day. They were getting close to throwing insults at each other and Harrison knew they had to resolve this tension somehow that let them clash everyday over the most trivial things. He just did not know yet if he had to take Ramon out on the street for a fight or in a bed for something more pleasant. In the end Ramon's hand on his thigh decided.

 

After that night the atmosphere in the workshop relaxed gradually. But they did not stop after one night. Not that it was a big deal or ever became. There were just some nights where they would fall in Ramon's bed together when they were stressed. Or bored. Or in the mood. Not a big deal.

 

But now there was something else threatening the truce in the workshop: Harrison's little black cat. It had grown substantially in the few weeks it had been living with them and so had its character. Ramon, at first its biggest fan, was now pleading to ban it from the workshop completely.

 

“It bit me.” He held his finger in front of Harrison's face. “And it scratched me. All over.”

 

“I thought you liked that,” Harrison said casually.

 

“Not from your fucking cat,” Cisco fumed. The tiger behind him growled. “And it throws all my tools around. I don't even like it when you do that.”

 

Before they could resolve the issue an incident made the whole argument obsolete. Harrison was leaning against the wall next to the door of the workshop when Ramon came along. Harrison must have looked really spooked because Ramon ran over to him.

 

“What happened?”

 

“It talked,” Harrison said and he could not believe the words coming out of his mouth.

 

“The cat?” Ramon asked, equally baffled.

 

Harrison nodded. They leaned around the door frame to look inside the workshop, three heads appearing in the door, Harrison over Ramon over tiger. The kitten sat in the middle of the workshop and meowed loudly.

 

“Maybe you just imagined it,” Cisco said.

 

For once Harrison hoped Ramon was right. Sadly luck had not been on Harrison's side for a long time.

 

“You know you should tell them,” Harrison heard a voice say the next time he was alone in the workshop. He whirled around with his chair. The cat sat behind him, cleaning itself seemingly uninterested in him. He observed it carefully.

 

“Tell them what?” He asked. The cat did not stop its cleaning. Harrison must be going crazy. He turned back to his project on the table. The device that would steal Barry's power.

 

“They're your friends. They trust you.”

 

This time Harrison was faster and he caught the cat mid-sentence. It looked caught if an animal could have that expression. Than it hopped on Harrison's lap to stare into his eyes.

 

“Can you really betray them like that?” The cat said, this time shamelessly, without hiding.

 

“Why are you talking?” Was the only thing Harrison can say.

 

“I thought you had understood the concept by now.”

 

“But I'm not from this earth,” Harrison argued.

 

The cat yawned and stretched. Then it hopped back on the ground and wandered out of the workshop.

 

It stayed on Harrison's mind; both the possible-daemon situation and what the cat had said. He still pondered it the next day, while he leaned with Ramon over the sloth, Barry's daemon. Because people could not get separated too far from their daemons Ramon designed a kind of bag for the sloth so Barry could carry them on his back when he ran. Right now they were trying out a new bag, better material, while Barry talked outside of the workshop with Iris. Ramon currently waited for the sloth to climb into the bag. Harrison watched it look up at Ramon with a dopey smile. What a weird creature. Ramon was grinning back, quietly serenading the sloth. He loved that sloth. He had told Harrison that he was convinced that Barry's sloth was the only daemon that did not give a flying shit what their human partner thought or felt.

 

“Beautiful sloth, climb in my bag,” Ramon sang to a melody he probably thought of himself. “Oh, great sloth. Perfect sloth. Climbs so gracefully in my bag.”

 

Harrison thought that he really could not lie any longer.

 

“I kinda want to punch you,” Ramon said when they were alone in the cortex after Harrison's confession. “But I also kinda want to hug you.”

 

The tiger had settled on Harrison's feet, cutting off the circulation of blood effectively. It was uncomfortable but affection was always uncomfortable for Harrison anyway.

 

“You could fuck me,” Harrison said. “That's kind of a violent hug.”

 

“You're awful,” Ramon said with a grin.

 

“Why are you bringing that?” Ramon asked while they were walking to his car. Harrison had not even noticed that he had brought the cat. He had put it in the pocket of his hoodie without even thinking about it.

 

“Did it talk to you again?” Ramon asked in the car. The cat sat in Harrison's lap and stared at Ramon. In the backseat the tiger snored.

 

“It did.”

 

“But if that is your daemon shouldn't it like me?” Ramon asked alternating his gaze between the street and the cat.

 

“You're assuming I like you,” Harrison said.

 

Ramon gave him the finger. The cat in his lap sneezed.

 

They stayed in Ramon's apartment for the rest of the day and Harrison wondered what this was turning into.

 

“I'm not watching your stupid movies with you,” Harrison said. He had his head reclined on the tiger's fuzzy belly and he heard a low sound of displeasure rising from the tiger at his words. The cat was trying to climb up the shelves while Ramon shooed it away from the breakables.

 

In the end they did watch a stupid movie that turned out to not be so stupid after all. Ramon was pressed up alongside him and giggled when he noticed Harrison getting sucked into the plot.

 

“I know you're a secret film nerd,” Ramon said. “You don't need to hide.”

 

“And as a secret film nerd I'm telling you you're collection is shit, Ramon.”

 

“Do you have to keep calling me my last name when we're in my bed?”

 

“You're collection is shit, Cisco. Better?”

 

“Much better,” Cisco said and kissed him.

 

The cat did not stop speaking to him. Harrison kind of hoped it would at some point but soon there was no denying it: he got a daemon. Surprisingly he got used to it very quickly. The cat was a fucking bastard and he loved them. At first he had thought it was like having a child but he realized soon that the best way to deal with his daemon was just to let them do their thing. The cat was not as cuddly as the tiger or carefree like the sloth or distant like the falcon. They would spend a day ignoring Harrison just to climb on him the next and not stop chattering. After some time even Cisco came to some arrangement with the cat and they would allow him to pet them from time to time or they would try to fight the tiger which the good-natured tiger let happen.

 

When it was time to return to his earth Harrison did. There was a goodbye scene in a car. They were coming from Cisco's apartment for the last time. Harrison knew this was his last chance because inside STAR Labs he could not. No one knew about them. Or rather, everyone knew but no one acknowledged it. They were in the parking lot, both unwilling to get out.

 

“Thank you,” Harrison said.

 

“For what?” Cisco said.

 

Harrison shrugged. Then he kissed Cisco again. Cisco seemed unable to decide if he wanted to push him away or pull him closer.

 

When Harrison walked through the portal his daemon turned into a normal animal. He knew it would happen, it happened before, for the short visit they did to Earth-2 to rescue Jesse. The cat still stuck to his side but the glimmer of intelligence in their eyes was gone. It left him with an unease he never quiet shook.

 

Harrison missed the cat talking to him. And he missed working with the team. He felt useful there. Not so much here as the head of a million dollar cooperation where he spent most of his time with meetings and management. And worst of all, he missed Cisco.

 

All that pulled him back to the other world and Jesse let him go with barely a sigh. She was old enough to have a world on her own. When he came out of the portal on the other side the cat hopped from his shoulder and stretched.

 

“Finally,” It said and rubbed against his legs before wandering off.

 

When he got to the cortex there was of course promptly another meta criminal to stop and greetings were cut short.

 

That evening he got invited to the housewarming party of Barry and Iris. The mood was good, easy conversation and laughter. Harrison sat in a comfortable chair and the cat was rolled together in his lap, purring sporadically.

 

He was not talking to anyone, instead following the conversation next to him. Or rather listening to Cisco play guitar. He had brought it over and now he was playing softly while Iris leaned against her brother, both listening intently.

 

“Can you sing, too?” Wally asked.

 

Cisco hesitated, the tiger who was lying to his feet on a rug raised his head and looked at him. He calmed them with a stroke over their head.

 

“I have learned this one song,” Cisco said. “But I'm not good.”

 

“Let us be the judge of that,” Iris said, and with the flickering light from the fireplace and her daemon, a green snake, gliding through her hair she looked like medusa.

 

Cisco started with a melody on the guitar and it reminded Harrison of something. Maybe he knew the song. Then Cisco started singing. Softly but surely. Harrison had heard him sing more times than he ever wanted to; screaming along to some radio station while working or making up his own words to some melody of the top of his head. But this was different. He sounded beautiful. Even the cat in Harrison lap bricked up their ears.

 

Harrison listened to the words Cisco was singing:

 

“ _His eyes and words are so icy, oh but he burns like rum on a fire. Hot and fast and angry as he can be I walk my days on a wire. It looks ugly but it's clean. Oh mamma, don't fuss over me.”_

 

Harrison felt a chill run down his spine. Cisco had his eyes closed and he looked lost in his own world.

 

“ _The way he tells me I'm his and he is mine. Open hand or closed fist would be fine. The blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine.”_

 

More and more people in the room were listening until all there was to hear was the guitar and Cisco's voice.

 

“ _But I want it. It's a crime that he's not around most of the time.”_

 

Harrison could feel Caitlin looking over to him.

 

“ _His fight and fury is fiery, oh but he loves like sleep to the freezing. Sweet and right and merciful. I'm all but washed in the tide of his breathing. And it's worth it. It's divine I have this some of the time.”_

 

Cisco did not open his eyes for the last part, did not look over to Harrison but he did not have to.

 

“ _Way he shows me I'm his and he's mine. Open hand or closed fist would be fine. Blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine.”_

 

The guitar echoed the chorus one last time then it was over. It was quiet for a while. Cisco came back to the world and realized everyone had been listening to him. He looked around, lingering on Harrison. All the unspoken words hung between them in the air, suddenly not so unspoken anymore. Harrison did not know what he was supposed to feel.

 

When the party was over they were all saying goodbye to each other on the street in front of the building. Harrison got dragged into a conversation with Julian - yet another glitch from the change of timelines – while he tried to keep Julian's monkey from tying his shoelaces together. When he got away and the knots in his shoelaces were where they were supposed to be again Cisco was already almost out of sight. The cat looked at him displeased.

 

“I know,” Harrison said to the cat and shoved it back in a pocket to run after Cisco. The tiger noticed him first and nudged Cisco in the side.

 

Cisco turned around in time so that Harrison could catch him in his arms and kiss him fiercely.

 

“I don't know what to say,” Harrison said when they parted.

 

Cisco cocked his head to the side, a sad smile playing around his lips. “Do you want to come back to my place?” He asked.

 

“Yes, but I do need to say something first,” Harrison hurried to say when the cat bit him, still painful through his clothes. “I want you.”

 

“I know,” Cisco said with a chuckle. “That's why I invited you to my place.”

 

“No. Yes.” Harrison wrecked his mind for the right words. “I want that. But I also want to wake up with you tomorrow and get coffee. And then I want to spend the day watching your stupid movies with you. And I want to work with you. Even save the world again if we have to. I want it all. With you.”

 

Cisco had seemingly unconsciously lowered his hand into the fur of his tiger during Harrison's speech. There was a look in his eyes like hope. “Are you asking me – very sweetly - to be your boyfriend?”

 

“Yes,” Harrison said. Well, he should have just said that. He felt the claws of the cat digging into his side, he felt like Cisco might just laugh at him and walk away.

 

But Cisco reached for Harrison's hand with the barest blush and said, “Let's do it.”

 

They walked in silence. The cat hopped out of Harrison's pocket and walked besides them. It was not far to Cisco's apartment. When they reached the stairs the cat meowed at Cisco until he picked them up and carried them upstairs.

 

In the apartment no one turned on the light. Harrison felt Cisco press against him with a fervor unlike anything. He felt raw and vulnerable under his touch. He felt so heavy like he could sink into the ground right there. Harrison had never felt like too much but right then he wanted to disappear under Cisco's skin, wanted to quiet down until there was only the sound of Cisco's breathing and the weight of Harrison's feelings, heavy like a rock in his heart, would be gone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [gets too close to microphone. clears throat.]: i don't like to gender animals.


End file.
